Easy and Hearty Vegetable Soup Made With Beef Broth

This hearty vegetable soup is loaded with vegetables: carrots, turnips, leeks, tomatoes and green beans. It's also made with beef stock, which gives it an especially rich, deep flavor, but you could use chicken stock if you prefer. Or for a vegetarian version, use vegetable stock.

And here's some more good news: You can use frozen green beans! As frozen veggies go, green beans are one of the best. They're sturdy enough to maintain freshness and quality through the flash-freezing process, especially if they're going into a soup. It'll save you a bit of work with the trimming and chopping. Just add them right at the end and simmer just until they're hot.

How to Make It

Cut the carrots, celery, onion, turnip and tomatoes into about ½-inch dice.

Trim the stem and green part from the leek and discard. Slice the white part lengthwise and rinse out any dirt. Then chop the leek thinly.

In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, heat the olive oil over a low-to-medium heat.

Add the carrots, celery, onion, garlic and leek and cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until the onion is slightly translucent, stirring more or less continuously.

Add the turnip and tomatoes, and cook for another minute, still stirring.

Add the wine and cook for another minute or two or until the wine seems to have reduced by about half.

Add the beef stock and the bay leaf, increase the heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Finally, add the frozen green beans and the fresh thyme and cook for another 5 minutes, or until the green beans are heated through but still firm and the turnip is soft but not mushy.

Season to taste with Kosher salt and white pepper and serve right away.

Variations: It wouldn't take much to doctor up this soup to make it even heartier. One thing it doesn't feature is any kind of starch. Thus, some leftover cooked potatoes or rice would definitely extend it. Or you could simmer it with uncooked potatoes. They'll take about the same amount of cooking time as the turnips.

You could also add some cooked beans, including canned. Red kidney beans, white navy beans or great northerns would work especially well.

Dried pasta or noodles will transform this soup into a lovely vegetable noodle soup. Consult the package instructions for how many minutes it takes to reach al dente, and then simply add the dried pasta that many minutes before the end of the soup's cook time.

Combine the pasta with the beans and you've cooked up a soup that's a standalone meal.

Nutritional Guidelines (per serving)

Calories

159

Total Fat

5 g

Saturated Fat

1 g

Unsaturated Fat

3 g

Cholesterol

0 mg

Sodium

424 mg

Carbohydrates

22 g

Dietary Fiber

5 g

Protein

5 g

(The nutrition information on our recipes is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate. Individual results may vary.)

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